Same-sex marriage: Heterosexual men warm to the idea of gay marriage more if they watch pornography

Campaigners for same-sex marriage have always come up against particularly vociferous opposition from heterosexual men.

But a study from the U.S. has suggested a novel method of persuading them to soften their stance on the divisive issue: get them to watch dirty videos.

The new academic analysis suggests that the more that straight men watch pornography, the more they warm to the idea that two people of the same sex could be married.

Paul Wright, assistant professor of communications at Indiana University and author of the study, said the effect was particularly marked in men who were less-well educated.

He said the change in attitude could because of pornography opens their mind to accepting non-traditional sexual situations - like those involving participants of the same sex.

'Our study suggests that the more heterosexual men, especially less educated heterosexual men, watch pornography, the more supportive they become of same-sex marriage,' he told the Washington Examiner.

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He went on: 'Pornography adopts an individualistic, non-judgemental stance on all kinds of non-traditional sexual behaviours and same-sex marriage attitudes are strongly linked to attitudes about same-sex sex.

'If people think individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to have same-sex sex, they will also think that individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to get married to a partner of the same-sex.'

Mind opening: The change in attitude could because of pornography opens the minds of men to accepting non-traditional sexual situations - like those involving participants of the same sex

The results of the study, published in the journal Communication Research, could be interpreted as suggesting that backers of same sex marriage should encourage men to watch more port.

MEN WHO LOOK AT PORN 'DAMAGE PARTNER'S SELF-CONFIDENCE'

It may make them more liberal and accepting in their attitudes towards gay marriage, but research shows that men who look at porn are making their partners miserable.

A study found that when their partners turn to X-rated films for pleasure it had a corrosive effect on a woman’s self confidence.

Women’s sex lives were also damaged if their partners preferred virtual ways of arousing himself instead of sleeping with them.

Destin Stewart, a clinical psychology intern at the University of Florida, looked at the problem after one of her patients explained she was having difficulty with her porn-addicted partner. She asked 308 students aged 18 to 29 and asked them to complete online questionnaires about how often their partners viewed porn.

They were also asked about how sexually satisfied they were, how much self-esteem they had and how they rated the quality of their relationship. All the women were heterosexual.

The results showed a strong statistical link between men viewing porn and women becoming unhappy. When women thought that their partner was a heavy porn user or a porn addict it also had a negative impact on their self-esteem and general sexual satisfaction.

Ms Stewart said that the key to solving the issue was to get couples to talk frankly about what they wanted, even though it can be tough.

She said: ‘It's just about trying to do some education about what is realistic and unrealistic and trying to get couples to be honest about what their wants and needs and desires are’.

Professor Wright said: 'Since a portion of individuals' sexual attitudes come from the media they consume, it makes sense that pornography viewers would have more positive attitudes towards same-sex marriage.'

If figures on internet usage are correct, it is likely that support for same-sex marriage will be fairly strong worldwide - researchers last year revealed a staggering 30 per cent of all online traffic is pornography.

The biggest porn site on the web - Xvideos - receives 4.4billion page views and 350million unique visits per month, according to figures revealed last spring.

The only sites that surpass this in size are the likes of Google and Facebook, according to an investigation carried out by ExtremeTech.

The report uncovered the viewing figures for Xvideos from Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner, which uses cookies to gather information about users.

It then used these figures - and actual data from the third biggest porn site, YouPorn - to extrapolate how much data is being transferred out of the site’s servers.

It based the first calculation on the average length of time spent on Xvideos, which is 15minutes, and assumed a low resolution video was being streamed.

From this it estimated that around 29 petabytes of pornography is being transferred a month, or 50 gigabytes per second.

However, it upped this estimate to 35 to 40PB per month after learning that YouPorn hosts over 100TB of porn, gets 100million page views and transfers 950 terabytes per day.

For the latest study, Professor Wright and study co-author Ashley Randall, of the University of Arizona, looked at data from studies of 500 heterosexual men over the past five years funded by the National Science Foundation.

'Pornography consumption did predict over-time increases in support for same-sex marriage,' they wrote.